We rolled into a small town in northern Mexico around 6pm, on our way to Wycliffe's jungle training camp in Ixtapa, Chiapas. To me, the stop here in this sleepy Mexican village in an already hot summer, was the beginning of a grand adventure I'd dreamed of as a small child. Palm trees waving in the southern breezes, and barefoot existence.

We found a small dusty hotel and my dad paid the few pesos for a room with plain curtains over a barred glass window for us kids, while he and mom fretted over our supper meal. She was afraid already of the germs we would encounter, but I was eagerly cross-eyed from kid hunger!

We ordered nervously from the single page menu, with mother cautioning each of us not to eat any vegetables. Yeah, right...No tomatoes Mom?? Latin America was famous for the Montezuma's revenge, and she was determined to get us through the next ten years without a scratch. Steak and ....tomatoes seemed really good, but I looked at my dad for a bit of manly courage. He ordered it, telling my dear mother he'd skip the fresh stuff...meat well done!

We ate, I skipped my moms caution and my dads flippant response. Starved little eleven year old, I dived in and wiped up the grease left behind! No way was I letting stuff sit! Well, I compromised and let the lettuce lay. It was after all, a boring and limp leaf on my plate. The rest didn't last the next ravenous bites, while Dad calmed my tremulous mater down. He also ate his tomatoes.

Between prayers for our safety and Mom's worries, we made it through the next years, traveling on to Peru, even more dangerous, a socialist country with machine gun armed police, and Bolivia a country already touched by the Castros and Che Guevara soon to descend into civil war as we tried to learn Spanish. Frightening, adventurous times. God watched over a teenage boy trying to dodge bullets and find His will. He kept me from dying several times...Yes He does watch over His own!